Saturday, June 06, 2015

Data stolen from U.S. government
computers by suspected Chinese hackers included security clearance
information and background checks dating back three decades, U.S.
officials said on Friday, underlining the scope of one of the largest
known cyber attacks on federal networks.

Of the four million federal employees whose data
were caught up in the breach, 2.1 million are reportedly current
government employees, and the fear is that their information could be
used for spear-phishing and to obtain even more sensitive
information.

Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Postreports
that according to unnamed agency officials, the information obtained
in the hack included employees’ Social Security numbers, job
assignments, performance ratings and training information but

OPM officials declined to comment on
whether payroll data was exposed other than to say that no
direct-deposit information was compromised. They could not say for
certain what data was taken, only what the hackers gained access to.

And of course, the finger-pointing has begun. As
the New York Timesreports,
an audit of the government’s computer security had as recently as
November pointed out the serious security shortcomings.

But watch out for those who attempt to use this
hack to support irrelevant or harmful legislation. Any legislation
proposed should seriously consider the opinions of actual
infosecurity and technology experts. So far, the government’s
ridiculous claims that we can have strong encryption but the
government should be able to break it makes many of us wonder what
color the sky is in Washington these days.

The disclosure by U.S. officials that
Chinese hackers stole records of as many as 4 million government
workers is now being linked to the thefts of personal information
from health-care companies.

Forensic evidence indicates that the
group of hackers responsible for the U.S. government breach announced
Thursday likely carried out attacks on health-insurance providers
Anthem Inc. and Premera Blue Cross that were reported earlier this
year, said John Hultquist of iSight Partners Inc., a
cyber-intelligence company that works with federal investigators.

Beijing
wants foreign technology firms to give up their source code in
exchange for Chinese business, and new rules are set to make that
happen, focusing first on the banking sector, and then moving to
other important markets.

The first set of rules, from earlier this year,
mandated that domestic banks move to "safe and controllable"
technology—meaning any tech firm interested in doing business with
most Chinese financial institutions would need to hand
over its relevant source code and encryption keys. [Would
you trust a bank that did that? Bob]

Payday didn’t go as planned on January
2, 2014, for some Boston
University employees. On that day, about a dozen
faculty members discovered their paychecks hadn’t been deposited
into their bank accounts. Thieves had changed the victims’ direct
deposit information and rerouted their pay. BU’s IT security team
traced the attack to a phishing email sent to 160 people at the
university. The email – which prompted BU faculty to click on a
link and confirm their log-in details – led to the compromise of 33
accounts. Thirteen faculty members had their paychecks stolen.

[…]

After BU warned faculty and staff of the
paycheck heist, the attackers send another phishing attempt that
played off BU’s warning and directed recipients to another bogus
site. “The folks who sent the original message were actively
watching us,” Shamblin said. “They coopted my authority for a
second attack on my people.”

[…]

Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away, University
of Iowa experienced similar attacks.

Read more on Network
World if you have an Insider account. I refuse to sign up
because they require that you enable third-party cookies and
javascript.

When you get a virus
on your computer, the results can be devastating to you,
personally. Some viruses, however, take the destruction and
devastation far beyond a few people. Some computer
viruses have caused million in damages the world over.

Which computer viruses have been the most
destructive throughout history? Check out the infographic below for
an extremely detailed look and prepare to be surprised, because some
of the damage caused by these viruses is truly hard to comprehend.

Like those devices that monitor your “safe
driving,” insurance companies will likely be all over these
devices. Perhaps this is the one where they switch from “discounts
for users” to “penalties for non-users.” Or governments could
require them on all new cars.

Feds And
Carmakers Unveil Systems To Disable Your Car If You've Been Drinking

… The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration unveiled a prototype vehicle with an advanced alcohol
detection system that could ultimately prevent vehicles from being
operated by a drunken driver.

The Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety —
known as “DADSS” — is a noninvasive system aimed at detecting
when a driver is above the legal alcohol limit by instantly measuring
the driver’s breath or skin. If your blood alcohol level is above
0.08 percent — the legal limit in all 50 states — the car will be
disabled.

If increased revenue is greater than legal fees,
then: Give the users what they want and let the lawyers figure it
out?

As Facebook has briskly emerged as YouTube’s
first forbidding challenger in online video, racking up 4 billion
views per day, the social network may have a mounting copyright issue
on its hands -- one that smacks of a similar conflict YouTube faced
in its early days.

Increasingly, YouTube creators are alleging that
their popular videos are being pilfered from the platform and
uploaded to Facebook. A
new term has even been coined for this practice: ‘freebooting.’

Because Facebook doesn’t offer adequate
copyright protection or give creators the ability to monetize their
videos just yet, argues
George Strompolos, CEO of leading YouTube network Fullscreen,
freebooting is detracting from ever-valuable YouTube views.

From a culture that honors age (and success) this
makes perfect sense. Still, Warren isn't likely to buy them.

The
Internet of Things Is Changing How We Manage Customer Relationships

… But now that Big
Data and the Internet
of Things have come along, we can go beyond the transaction to
every little detail of the customer’s actual experience. You can
know when customers enter your store, how long they are there, what
products they look at, and for how long. When they buy something,
you can know how long that item had been on the shelf and whether
that shelf is in an area of things that usually sell fast or slowly.
And then you can view that data by shoppers’ age, gender, average
spend, brand loyalty, and so on.

National
Journal – “Don’t be fooled: Congress may have finally
passed the
bill reining in the National Security Agency’s bulk-surveillance
programs [USA Freedom Act of 2015], but your data is still being
collected on the Internet. Lost in the debate over the NSA is the
fact that companies like Google and Facebook continue to vacuum up
vast troves of consumer data and use it for marketing. The
private-sector tech companies that run the social networks and email
services Americans use every day are relatively opaque when it comes
to their data-collection and retention policies, which are engineered
not to preserve national security but to bolster the companies’
bottom lines. Critics say the consumer data that private
companies collect can paint as detailed a picture of an individual as
the metadata that got caught up in the NSA’s dragnets. Companies
like Google and Facebook comb through customers’ usage statistics
in order to precisely tailor marketing to their users, a valuable
service that advertisers pay the companies dearly to access. “What
both types of information collection show is that metadata—data
about data—can in many cases be more revelatory than content,”
said Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel at the American Civil
Liberties Union. “You see that given the granularity with which
private data collection can discern very intimate details about your
life… For their part, various tech companies are paying attention
to the trend. Google on Monday unveiled a frequently
asked questions page to address users’ privacy concerns,
answering questions like “Does Google sell my personal
information?” and “How does Google keep my information safe?”
It also revamped its account settings page, offering privacy and
security “checkups” to walk users through steps to keep their
data safe. On the same day, Facebook announced
it will offer the option to send sensitive information, like password
reset links, in encrypted emails. (“New Facebook feature shows
actual respect for your privacy,” read a Wired
headline on an article about the announcement.) Facebook already
encrypts traffic to and from its site, and offers privacy fanatics—or
those who fear government retribution for their actions on the social
network—access to its services via the Tor browser, widely regarded
as the most secure and private way to access the Internet.”

Hackers working for the Chinese state breached the
computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December,
U.S. officials said Thursday, and the agency will notify some 4
million current and former federal employees that their personal data
may have been compromised.

Without public
notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National
Security Agency‘s warrantless surveillance of Americans’
international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious
computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents.

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two
secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet
cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to
computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that
flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the
documents show.

The Justice Department allowed the agency to
monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” — patterns
associated with computer intrusions — that it could tie to foreign
governments.

I wonder why no law school has created a “New
Technologies and the Law” center to explain how new technologies
might impact the law. Wouldn't the companies who create the
technology be willing to fund it? (And pot holes should be regulated
under the marijuana laws because... Pot!)

The Nevada Supreme Court said Thursday
that the
state’s wiretap law permits the interception of cellphone calls
and text messages even though it has not been updated since 1973.

[…]

But a three-justice panel of the court
said Nevada’s law regarding “wire communications” includes
cellphones. The court said that “wireless”
cellphone communications do involve the use of a wire when the
communication reaches a cellular tower and is then transmitted by
wire through a switching station to another transmitting tower.

There
are many things in the Internet of Things (IoT); so many that
enterprises are often finding themselves challenged to keep up and
secure them all.

In
a new study from OpenDNS entitled 'The
2015 Internet of Things in the Enterprise Report',
researchers found that IoT devices are common in highly-regulated
industries, even though the infrastructure supporting those devices
has its share of
cracks in it.

"The
traditional approach of designing a strong perimeter and controlling
everything inside of that perimeter just isn’t
possible anymore," said Mark Nunnikhoven, senior research
scientist on the OpenDNS Security Labs team.

The federal Wiretap Act is the major
privacy law that protects privacy in communications.

[…]

In this post, I want to focus on a
particularly tricky and important application of the problem that is
raised in a case now pending
in the Third Circuit: How does the Wiretap Act apply to
surveillance of websurfing? Say a person is surfing the web, and a
surveillance device is monitoring the URLs that a person is visiting.
When, if at all, can that violate the Wiretap Act? Are the URLs
contents or metadata, and if URLs are contents, who are the parties
to that communication that can consent?

Google
and a couple of other Internet companies that use third-party cookies
to track the online behavior of people who use browsers that are
specifically designed and advertised as barring that kind of tracking
are the only defendants in the case, "but this is how systems
across the entire Internet work and whatever ruling this court issues
is going to affect broad swaths of companies and how they interact,"
said Michael Rubin, the Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati lawyer
who represented Google in front of the Third Circuit.

This is a significant change. I can see why many
tech companies would love it.

Under the draft provisions of the latest
trade deal to be leaked by Wikileaks, countries
could be barred from trying to control where their citizens’
personal data is held or whether it’s accessible from outside the
country.

Wikileaks has released 17
documents relating to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA),
currently under negotiation between the US, the European Union and 23
other nations. These negotiating texts are supposed to remain secret
for five years after TISA is finalized and brought into force.

The National Institute of Standards and
Technology is probably best known for the cybersecurity guidelines it
released in late 2013, but the organization frequently authors
reports on critical issues in the technology space. The NIST
recently released a draft of one such report designed to aid federal
organizations in processing private citizen information. Now
entering a public commenting period that will remain open until July
13, the report, “Privacy Risk Management for Federal Information
Systems,” seeks to create a universal vocabulary for discussing the
challenges of private data processing, while providing modes of
thinking that can be applied as information processing continues to
evolve.

[…]For more on the “Privacy Risk
Management for Federal Information Systems Framework” draft and to
submit comments, visit NIST.gov.

A general suggested at an event that the Air Force
was able to target an attack on a building used by the Islamic State
in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) based on a single social media post,
according to an account published
by Defense Tech.

“It was a post on social media to bombs on
target in less than 24 hours,” Gen. Hawk Carlisle said during an
Air Force Association event. “Incredible work when you think
about.”

“The guys that were working down out of
Hurlburt, they’re combing through social media and they see some
moron standing at this command. And in some social media, open forum,
bragging about the command and control capabilities for Daesh, ISIL.
And these guys go: ‘We got an in.’ So they do some work, long
story short, about 22 hours later” the building had been destroyed
by a strike, he said.

… Social media platforms have moved to suspend
users associated with the group, but the authors of the Brookings
paper found those were not successful on a broad scale.

“Account suspensions do have concrete effects in
limiting the reach and scope of ISIS activities on social media,”
they wrote. “They do
not, at the current level of implementation, eliminate those
activities, and cannot be expected to do this.” [Think
of this a permanent suspension. Bob]

Microsoft
is going to let governments look at its source code in a special
office to prove spies can't use it

Microsoft has opened a special office in Brussels
that will allow European governments to dig through its source code
in search of any backdoors that could allow foreign spy agencies to
intercept information.

Microsoft posted
on its blog that it's launching the special office to support a
"high level of openness and cooperation" with European
governments, who are deeeply suspicious of the online surveillance
conducted by the US's NSA.

…
It
already has one transparency center in Washington, but this is the
first of its kind to be opened in Europe.

The
Philippines on Friday expressed concern over reports a Chinese
warship has fired a warning shot on a Filipino fishing boat near a
reclaimed reef in the disputed South China Sea, Manila's defence
minister said.

China
has been rapidly expanding its occupied reefs in the Spratly
archipelago, alarming other claimants, and drawing sharp criticism
from the United States, Japan and European States.

"If
indeed this happened, it is a cause of grave concern." Defence
Minister Voltaire Gazmin told journalists in a text message from
Tokyo, where he joined a four-day state visit by Philippine President
Benigno Aquino.

China
claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in
ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Brunei,
Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam also have overlapping claims.

On Thursday, Philippine President Benigno Aquino
III, who is on a state visit to Japan this week, signed a deal with a
Japanese shipbuilder to buy a fleet of 10 patrol vessels. Tokyo will
provide a low-interest loan worth ¥19 billion ($150 million) to pay
for the ships, marking a significant shift in Japan’s foreign aid
program focused until now on infrastructure projects.

Excel
is my favourite Microsoft program both for its use in Mathematics
teaching and for data analysis. In 2013 at the TSM
ConferenceI was very
fortunate to meet and be trained by Mike Hadden. I had already
discovered and often used Mike’s
Excel files for my teaching; in 2013 thanks to Mike I
discovered the joys of Excel macros which save me a serious number of
hours in my job!

Thursday, June 04, 2015

Drew
Fitzgerald – WSJ.com – “Earlier this month, Brett Wentworth
took Level 3 Communications Inc. into territory that most rivals have
been reluctant to enter. The director of global security at the
largest carrier of Internet traffic cut off data from reaching a
group of servers in China that his company believed was involved in
an active hacking attack. The decision was reached after a broad
internal review. The Broomfield,
Colo., company is taking an aggressive—and some say risky
approach—to battling criminal activity. Risky because hackers
often hijack legitimate machines to do their dirty work, raising the
risk of collateral damage by sidelining a business using the same
group of servers. Such tactics also run against a widely held belief
that large carriers should be facilitating traffic, not halting it.
And carriers are reluctant
to create the expectation that they will police the Internet.
Yet with attacks on the rise, Level 3 three years ago decided it is
worth the risks. At a rate of about once every few weeks, the
carrier is shutting down questionable traffic that doesn’t involve
any of its clients. When the source of the trouble is hard to
pinpoint, it often casts a wide net and intercepts traffic from large
blocks of Internet addresses. Recently, that meant stopping traffic
from a powerful network of computer servers controlled by a group of
hackers that security researchers dubbed SSHPsychos. The group used
rented machines in a data center to hack other computers that could
bring down target websites by flooding them with junk traffic. Level
3 blocked a broad swath of the Hong Kong-registered data center’s
IP addresses from the Internet.”

It can't be because management is doing such a
fine job of controlling their organizations. Perhaps it is because
politicians don't like to be second guessed? More likely because
they don't know how to use the IG to their advantage.

“At their best, Offices of Inspector General
(OIG) are essential to a well-functioning federal government. IG
offices recover billions of dollars in wasted taxpayer funds and make
improvements to federal programs that keep us healthy, safe, and
secure. IGs wear two hats, reporting to their agency heads and to
Congress. As a result of this dual-reporting structure, IGs are
uniquely positioned to serve as your eyes and ears within the
executive branch, giving you the information you need to conduct
effective oversight and pass meaningful legislation. POGO has worked
for years to study and improve the IG system, and we have supported
legislation to make IGs more independent and accountable. As such,
we are deeply troubled to find that many senior IG officials are
allegedly currying favor with the very agency leaders they’re
supposed to oversee, and taking other inappropriate actions that
would cause any reasonable person to question the IG’s
independence. Among the most pervasive threats to IG independence
and effectiveness are the long-standing vacancies that have
languished at IG offices throughout the federal government. POGO
believes it is no coincidence that so many long-time acting IGs have
found their independence called into question on front pages of
newspapers across the country—especially when those acting
officials make it known they are auditioning for the role of
permanent IG. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that
the opening of an IG vacancy can occur for a perfectly appropriate
reason—such as removing a permanent IG who fails to uphold her
office’s mission.”

This happens when you think of your customers as
“sources of revenue” rather than people. I'm thinking of
starting an “Advertising Advisory Service.” I'll load my social
networking pages will all kinds of “interests” and charge anyone
who “opts in” to my service (by sending me an ad) a very
reasonable $100 per review. I figure I can review about 200 ads per
day, as soon as I get the program written.

Today, PayPal
announced a few upcoming changes to its user agreement, which
will affect a lot of users so read the fine print once you’re
agreeing to the soon-to-be-updated terms. The main clause discovered
in the agreement gives the company rights to contact you via text or
call to your personal number which you didn’t provide to the
service in the first place.

According to the Washington Post, an updated
clause in the agreement allows the company to send "autodialed
or prerecorded calls and text messages," on phone numbers; which
if you didn’t provide yourself, the company has "otherwise
obtained" from other sources.

While the new clause may seem as a dire violation
of your privacy, under the previous agreement, PayPal already had the
authority to scour various sources in order to keep a repository of
phone numbers belonging to its clients.

Whistleblower
website WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 bounty for copies of a Pacific
trade pact that is a central plank of President Barack Obama's
diplomatic pivot to Asia on Tuesday.

WikiLeaks, which has published leaked chapters of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating text before, started
a drive to crowdsource money for the reward, just as U.S. unions
launched a new push to make the text public.

…
Nine hours after the campaign was launched, WikiLeaks' website was
showing $25,835 pledged by more than 100 people.

(Related) Who really runs the government when
your PAC contributors know more that congressmen in your own party?

Ericsson’s
latest mobility
report is out this morning, and it finds, perhaps unsurprisingly,
that we’ll be swamped in smartphones by 2020. Even taking into
account the company’s obvious interest in this finding, it’s
still a shock to realize that the recently acquired cultural posture
of bending over a small shiny object while swiping away at the glass
will become nearly universal in just five more years.

The company predicts that the world’s population
will support 6.1 billion smartphone subscriptions in 2020. Accepting
a population estimate from Population
Pyramids of the World of 7.7 billion yields a proportion of 79%.
In its report, Ericsson gives a figure of 70%.

… Including all phones, the report says, not
just smart ones, phone penetration will reach 90% of the world’s
population by 2020.

Darn, I was going to try this. But if it's legal,
why was he suspended? Can he sue?

Makers of heavy-duty trucks in two years must add
electronic stability-control systems to new vehicles, an effort by
the U.S. government to prevent rollover crashes that kill about 300
drivers a year and injure 3,000 others.

The technology uses engine torque and
computer-controlled braking to help truckers maintain control in
emergencies by keeping the wheels on the ground and the trailers from
swinging. The regulatory requirement, proposed in 2012, is estimated
to cost $585 per truck

Once again we see that the world does not work as
the MPAA would like it to.

A judge in New Zealand has said that Kim Dotcom,
the founder of now-defunct file-sharing service Megaupload, who is
facing federal charges, does not have to forfeit his property,
despite the order of a U.S. judge.

It’s a blow to federal prosecutors, who were
hoping to force Dotcom to comply with the order of a federal judge in
Virginia, Ars Technica reported
on Wednesday.

The Virginia judge ruled in March that Dotcom had
lost the case over forfeiting his property by default. But a judge
on the High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry, found the legal
theory being used by American authorities was not recognized in New
Zealand.

For the last 6 years I have done all of my
teaching on a tablet Windows PC. I have really liked using the tool
for these reasons. I can have a digital copy of all of my lessons
sync to all of my computers and be instantly searchable. Since my
lesson was already digital I could easily upload it to my website. I
could use any computer program (graphing utilities, geometric or
algebraic drawing utilities, Excel, and more) in my lesson
seamlessly.

But up until last year there was a drawback. I
could never leave my podium for a couple of reasons. First, the
computer did not have a way to wirelessly stream the video output to
the projector. Also, the computer was not small enough to just pick
up and walk around with using only one hand.

One of the best things about technology is how the
tools we use are constantly changing. Last year I updated my school
computer to a Surface Pro 2. The portability of this computer is
incredible! I was inspired to look into ways of untethering myself
from my podium. I originally used the software program AirParrot to
send the video to my Apple TV. And while that solution was good, it
was rather processor intensive and would drain the battery pretty
quickly. Just recently I started using a Microsoft
Wireless Display Adapter, which Windows 8 natively supports (the
streaming stick uses the Miracast wireless streaming protocol). This
setup has a much smaller drain on my battery which means more time
away from my podium!

For my Statistics students. Is this greater than
random? What data do you need to answer this question?

Shootings are on the rise this year in New York
City, and the trends are
raising questions about whether Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision
to cut down on stop-and-frisk tactics has made it easier to carry
guns in New York.

… In 2012, the NYPD made
more than 532,000 stops, each of which could progress to a frisk or
to a full search. The police found guns only 715 times.1
In other words, guns were found during 0.1 percent of stops.

… The NYCLU data set shows
that 23 percent of all stops and searches were prompted by concerns
about a possible weapon.2
The police did find guns more often in these cases (36 of every
10,000 weapon-related stops compared with seven of every 10,000
non-weapon-related stops). However, this still seems like a low
success rate, and it may be skewed. Police officers write up their
reasons for a stop afterward and can retroactively claim gun-related
causes after finding the weapon, even if they weren’t the true
reason for the stop.

A paper my Data Management students might find
interesting. (Yes, that is what I call a “hint.”)

Navigating
a World of Digital Disruption by Philip Evans & Patrick Forth:
“Digital disruption is not a new phenomenon. But the
opportunities and risks it presents shift over time. Competitive
advantage flows to the businesses that see and act on those shifts
first. We are entering the third, and most consequential, wave of
digital disruption. It has profound implications not only for
strategy but also for the structures of companies and industries.
Business leaders need a new map to guide them. This article explains
the factors underlying these disruptive waves, outlines the new
strategic issues they raise, and describes a portfolio of new
strategic moves that business leaders need to master.”

… In addition to trafficking in stolen
credentials and content, the pair developed, marketed and sold a
malicious tool that allowed others to steal content from Photobucket
that was private and password-protected, the indictment notes.

… Bourret and Andrianakis both face one count
of conspiracy, which carries a penalty of up to five years in federal
prison US$250,000 in possible fines; one count of computer fraud, aid
and abet, which also carries the same possible penalties; and two
counts of access device
fraud, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in
prison, and the possibility of a $250,000 fine for each count.

Unforeseen Consequences

However, the new focus on the tools employed could
have some unforeseen consequences for white hat researchers.

"So far, no one has been arrested for
creating a tool. It was more the using of the tool that has been the
issue," noted Johannes B. Ullrich, chief research officer at the
SANS
Institute.

"This does more than affect the underground.
This affects thousands of [penetration] testers who make a living
testing the defenses of companies with their permission,"
Ullrich told TechNewsWorld.

"If creating and distributing a tool is
considered a crime," he continued, "then many of them are
out of a job."

Interesting, but I can't believe this has gone
unnoticed. Look at the “8 letter message” and tell me this isn't
regularly encountered?

Amazon just
announced a new shipping program that could steal more business from
your local convenience store

… This week, the company banished its $35
minimum on free shipping. Instead people can opt for free,
four-to-eight-day delivery on thousands of small, light products,
such as phone cases, ear plugs, and toothbrushes.

Amazon calls it its "small and light"
program, because it applies only to products that weigh less than 8
ounces, are smaller than 9x6x2 inches, and cost under $10.

The Wall Street bank is eliminating voicemail for
thousands of employees who do not take calls from customers, at a
savings of $10 a month per person, Gordon Smith, chief executive of
the company's consumer banking operations, said at an investor
conference on Tuesday.

… "We realise that hardly anyone uses
voicemail anymore," Smith said. "We are all carrying
something in our pockets that is going to get texts or email or a
phone call," he said. "We started to cut those off."

Perspective. Big Data does not require big
hardware. Very “James Bond,” “Q” will be amsused.

SanDisk has found a way to squeeze 128GB of flash
storage into an external drive that’s smaller than our smallest
coin. Forget the thumb drive; this is a thumbnail drive.

The SanDisk
Ultra Fit isn’t a new form factor; it debuted last fall in
16GB, 32GB, and 64GB varieties. But 128GB in a pebble-sized drive
represents a significant capacity-to-size breakthrough. That is,
after all, the same amount of storage you’ll find in a baseline
MacBook Air (or, for that matter, top-end iPhone). It’s enough
space to fit up to 16 hours of full HD video

Even games could help my Math students. God knows
some of them really need help.

An internal investigation of the Transportation
Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of
the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were
able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints
in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

… Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was
apparently so frustrated by the findings he sought a detailed
briefing on them last week at TSA headquarters in Arlington,
Virginia, according to sources. U.S. officials insisted changes have
already been made at airports to address vulnerabilities identified
by the latest tests.

… More recently, the DHS inspector general’s
office concluded a series of undercover tests targeting checked
baggage screening at airports across the country.

That review found “vulnerabilities” throughout
the system, attributing them to human error and technological
failures, according to a three-paragraph summary of the review
released in September.

In addition, the review determined that despite
spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and
another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the
TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.

(Related) Not fired (not sure what you would have
to do to get fired from a government agency) but the rhetoric will
make it sound that way.

IRS computers are still running the 13-year old
Microsoft Windows XP
operating software which Microsoft stopped supporting a year ago with
security updates. Even the agency’s fraud-catching software is two
decades old.

… IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has said
budget cuts have kept the service from upgrading, telling
Congressional members that “we
still have applications that were running when John F. Kennedy was
president.”

The news comes as cold comfort to the tens of
thousands of Americans who have had their identity stolen as a result
of filing their taxes. And, the breaches can be no surprise to the
IRS itself which has been warned repeatedly by the Government
Accountability Office over limited security controls. In the
most recent report, the GAO found 69 potential problems, including
weak employee passwords.

Flag this resource, eventually you will need it.
(Probably 90% of victims can not do step 1)

“News
about data breaches at banks, stores, and agencies is an everyday
occurrence now. But if your private information has been
compromised, it doesn’t feel commonplace to you. The sooner you
find out, and begin damage control, the better off you’ll be.
IdentityTheft.gov,
a new website, offers step-by-step checklists of what to do right
away, and what to do next, depending on the information that’s been
stolen or exposed. It lists warning
signs indicating your identity was stolen, and gives websites and
phone numbers for organizations you’ll need to reach. And, it has
sample letters for disputing fraudulent charges, correcting
information in your credit reports, and getting business records
relating to the theft. Check out IdentityTheft.gov,
bookmark it, and print out the checklists, as your first line of
defense against identity theft.”

You’ll be able to share a public encryption key
in your profile, and set up encrypted notifications so that all the
emails you receive from Facebook will be protected with encryption.

Facebook’s encryption work with OpenPGP, and it
uses GNU Privacy Guard (GPG), a popular free implementation of PGP
technology. If this all sounds confusing, Lifehacker has
a great guide to setting up email encryption if you haven’t
done so yet,

… as much as Facebook needs people to keep
posting personal information, it also needs people to feel secure
doing so.

Once you’re satisfied with those, you can
“manage the information that can be used from Search, Maps, YouTube
and other products to enhance your experience on Google,” “Use
the Ads Settings tool to control ads based on your interests and the
searches you’ve done,” and “Control which apps and sites are
connected to your account”.

All of which should help ensure you’re only
sharing what you want to share with Google and others trapped within
its extensive ecosystem. Alternatively, you could go into full
tinfoil hat conspiracy theory mode and try to break
away from Google completely.

Perspective. Are we in the 'consolidation phase'
of the chip industry, or is this a move of desperation?

Intel Corp's $17 billion
purchase of programmable chip maker Altera Corp is a costly defensive
move to ward off rivals in the prized datacenter business it
dominates, analysts said on Monday.

… "This whole
deal is defensive for the datacenter," said Bernstein analyst
Stacy Rasgon, who saw it as an admission by Intel that it was getting
harder to drive performance gains.

He questioned Intel's
projections for the programmable chip market, which is built on
datacenter use and growing adoption of Intel chips in everyday
objects connected to the Internet. "I
think their growth goals are ludicrous," he said.
"They think it's going to grow 7 percent a year, but Altera
shrunk 2 percent a year in the last three years."

… Intel, which
analysts estimate has more than 90 percent of the datacenter market,
already has an agreement to use Altera chips. Its move comes as
companies such as Qualcomm Inc, using ARM Holdings -designed chips
and the soon-to-be merged Avago Technologies and Broadcom Corp , also
target the datacenter market.

By buying Altera,
Intel avoids the risk of
being dropped as the smaller company's manufacturing partner,
which had been the subject of some speculation, said Gartner analyst
Mark Hung.

The purchase means
Intel is hedging against the likelihood that the rise of FPGA chips
will reduce the need for central processing unit (CPU) chips running
servers, where Intel currently dominates.

If you weren’t reading this article, you would
probably be scanning something else on the internet, watching TV, or
maybe—just maybe—reading a newspaper or magazine. In short, you
would be consuming media.

On average, people spend more than 490 minutes of
their day with some sort of media, according to a new report by
ZenithOptimedia. Television remains dominant, accounting for three
hours of daily consumption—an hour more than the internet, in
second place.

“Scholars'
Labs” I like it. Sounds like we're growing students in a Petri
dish.

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.